With Liz Kendall reaching the 35 votes needed to get on the ballot overnight, thanks to the backing of Gloria De Piero, spare a thought for Jeremy Corbyn, her leftist rival for the Labour leadership. On the eve of nominations opening, Corbyn took to Newsnight to tell Evan Davis that Ed Miliband did really well, UKIP voters are racists and Labour lost because they weren’t left-wing enough and the voters were ‘confused’:

“Ed Miliband did very well on zero hour contracts, did very well on rights at work. Those issues, brilliant. The problem was underneath it was the party was offering austerity-lite underneath it.”

“UKIP is a devil-may-care vote, it’s also motivated to some extent by racism within it.”

“People were very confused to some extent at the election to what was on offer, the Labour manifesto was actually very good. I agreed with it.”

When in doubt, blame the voters. Corbyn went on to say that he had no problem with a 60% state.

Guido suspects Evan Davis was taking the p*ss with his “under a Corbyn government…” gag.